Chapter 55

You would think that during the summer of year three I would be taking it easy since in third year I had already made it to the interview stage. You would also think that this summer, being the last one I get to spend with the girlfriend, that I would spend more time with her and take care of her more. Unfortunately, I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I got very paranoid. 

In the summer of year 3, I had done as much as I could for applications. I had a very relaxed part time course schedule with only some easy non-time-consuming music courses and one science course. My job in retail at the campus stationary store was also very relaxing since the summer term has low student turnout. It was quiet on most days and this meant that any studying I needed for the music courses was usually done when I was at work. 

With no major obligations to note and an application profile that, I now know, could get me to the interview stage, I decided to spend more time and energy to torture myself and do the OAT again. Why? Well, the main concern I had was that this year, all of my colleagues who had an interest in professional school would be applying for optometry school with me. There was always competition, but never did I feel it this close to my living quarters. 

In hindsight, all of this entire summer was kind of overkill. I bought new Princeton Guidebooks for the OAT concepts, all the practice tests I could get my hands on from the Pre-Optometry Club and then the newest version of the Kaplan OAT standardized tests. I wanted a better score to secure my spot. 

I didn’t stop there though. Just for good measure, I figured I would try and work on my plan B of the pharmacy program again and volunteer at a pharmacy. Even if it was just a backup, it would also look good on a resume for any professional school application. It was clear that I was trying to do everything and anything to stay away from having no plans at all after my graduation next year. 

The OAT this time around was much simpler for me. I had over prepared everything and memorized all the small stuff I’d ignored the first time. I had it all locked down. When the test finally came, I was thoroughly racing through every question. In the end, I had twice the amount of time I had last year for the English section, which still took the longest time. Sure enough, this time I would definitely knock the score out of the park. Well…for the most part…

When I had finished writing my test, the computer screen printed my marks and I was eager to find out my new ranking. The first number I saw for English. In the last exam, this had been my worst performing grade with a ranking in the 70th percentile. I was now in the 60th percentile. This was devastating, I had done worse than the last time. 

English, of all things, had also been the worst of my scores last time and therefore, had been one of the subjects I tried my hardest this summer to remedy. Looks like it didn’t work out. This wasn’t the end of the world though. I now had almost perfect scores across the board and for the subject breakdowns, 2 subjects, math and biology, were perfect 400 scores. This meant I had gotten every question correct on these subjects. Overall, my final score of this second run of the OAT? 94% percentile. That was despite the horrible score on the English portion.

What followed after this OAT was a bit of a strange yet eye opening event. You see, with the OAT test, you were given the choice to send your OAT scores to a number of schools for free. I usually only cared about Waterloo since that was the only one I wanted to attend and put down some random school names after that just to fill the form out. I never thought that after this new OAT score, that one of them would send me a letter. The letter, while not an official acceptance,  said that if I applied to their school with the OAT score I had, it was guaranteed that I would receive a $25,000 scholarship. 

I was kind of happy with the letter. I mean, I hadn’t even applied to that school at all nor even considered it. The reason I brushed this off? Easy, while this was enticing. $25,000 in scholarships was quite a small number in comparison to the tuition. The Waterloo Optometry program was known to be the cheapest out of all the programs in North America. Most US Optometry Schools had tuition fees that tripled that of Waterloo. This was also one of the reasons I never even considered the US Optometry schools and why my backup was the Waterloo Pharmacy program. It was too much hassle financially to take out so many loans to make the US Optometry dream work. 

The most eye opening part of all this. I realized that I didn’t want to be an Optometrist as much as I thought. If the profession was truly what I fell in love with, I would be surely willing to sacrifice anything to become one, even if it meant going to the states. In the end, it turns out I simply just wanted a future in healthcare because of its stability. 

The rest of the summer aside from this letter wasn’t too exciting. This fact is one for which I really regret. Why? Well, the elephant in the room of course. This was the last term for the girlfriend and I to stay together on campus. She was graduating. 

We didn’t do anything special. For the last 3 years of us being together, we had always been together physically and almost always had been on campus together. This was the last term for it. I really should have done something special thinking back. 

She had been my bedrock and my biggest cheerleader. Whether it be music or my career goals, she was always there to help me and was nothing but good to me. It’s obvious to me now what I should have done back then. I should have not spent her birthday, which was during the summer term, just cramming for the OAT.

She didn’t mind this since she was thinking about her next steps too and had decided to apply for nursing but that’s still a poor excuse for me. I should have done something for her. I mean, I should have done something on the fact that I had been such a negligent boyfriend for pretty much our entire relationship. I was selfish and she was loving. She was clearly too good for me and even at this major crossroads in our life, I didn’t think to show appreciation back to her. 

Towards the end of the summer term, I don’t think we even discussed how big of a separation we were going to have. We were about to become long distance and were completely uncertain as to how it may work out. I wasn’t sure what she was going through but I remember what I was going through. Complete ignorance. I only had my eye on one thing during even our last days together in Waterloo. I only had my eyes on the future. 

Just like that, she was gone.